The craft and passion of a writer are tricky things to translate to the big screen. Watching someone sit at a typewriter or laptop--pecking away or staring off into space--doesn't really make for good viewing. It's rare that a movie can capture the vast internal worlds of the writer and effectively portray the daily struggle to create. There are, however, a handful of films that have really gotten it right. Some of these were big hits, while others flew under the radar with barely a peep, but they all have one thing in common. They illustrate a deep understanding of the writer's life and creative process.

7. The End of the Affair

The 1999 film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel is a beautifully filmed love story that borders on the operatic. Maurice (Ralph Fiennes) is a novelist who has fallen in love with the married Sarah (a brilliant, Oscar-nominated Julianne Moore). We bear witness to the obsessions of a writer who has at last found his muse, but--alas--she can never belong to him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF-XGy_Y2hA

6. Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

Jennifer Jason Leigh heads up an all-star cast in this character study of legendary writer Dorothy Parker and her Algonquin Roundtable cohorts. Leigh dives into the role of Parker with delicious abandon as she tries to balance love, booze, and the demands of the writing life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMX6BubBwmM

5. Misery

Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is held captive by his self-professed "number one fan," a psycho nurse named Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates, who won an Oscar). At a remote mountain cabin, Stephen King's tale of horror and writerly pressure unfolds in a fascinating two-character power struggle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptpaEntid74

4. Stranger than Fiction

Will Ferrell takes it down a notch to portray IRS schlub Harold Crick, who one day begins to hear a voice that seems to be narrating his life. The voice belongs to Emma Thompson's Karen Eiffel, a writer who is indeed crafting Harold's story. This wildly inventive tale offers a profound (and very funny) meditation on creativity and the precious fragility of this life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51aqOv-7Vu8

3. Adaptation

A bizarre and engrossing tale of a screenwriter trying to adapt an "unadaptable" book, director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman hit pay dirt with Adaptation. A strong cast (Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Meryl Streep) take us on a wild ride from the tony enclaves of L.A. to the backwater swamps of Florida.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HtZ2M4e_AM

2. Henry and June

Philip Kaufman's movie is based on the memoirs of famed diarist Anaïs Nin, who, while living in 1920s Paris, became embroiled in a love triangle. The other players in the ménage were the lovably bombastic American author Henry Miller (Fred Ward) and his beautiful, mysterious actress-wife, June (Uma Thurman). Frank, dreamlike, and poetic, the film brings life to both the magnificence and pain of the creative process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78FMYn-96oE

1. Tom and Viv

Willem Dafoe is the stuffy T.S. Eliot and Miranda Richardson is his vibrant but mentally unstable wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Powered by Richardson's Oscar-nominated performance, this film perfectly captures how life influences art--and vice versa.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryoOtlty8go